The present invention relates to estimating arrival times at transit stops, and more specifically, to estimating arrival times at transit stops for a scheduled transportation system.
Scheduled transportation systems are transportation systems in which a vehicle follows one or more predefined routes and makes scheduled stops along the routes. Each route may be served by one or more vehicles during a day, with each vehicle being scheduled to stop at one or more locations along the route. A journey is single run of a vehicle along a journey pattern, or a collection of routes, with planned stop locations and times. The collections of all vehicle journey patterns combine to form a production table.
Due to variations in traffic conditions, unplanned delays, and the like it may be impossible for vehicles to arrive at the stop locations at the scheduled times in the production table. Many current scheduled transportation systems attempt to provide updates to the users of the scheduled transportation system about changes to the scheduled stop times in the production time table. This information often includes an estimated time of arrival of a vehicle at a location. The estimated time of arrival may be an absolute time, e.g., 10:00 pm, or a relative time, e.g., in 5 min, which can be compared to the scheduled time of arrival.
Several different methods are currently used to calculate the estimated time of arrival of the vehicle at a location. However, the methods currently used are either inaccurate or depend on information that may not always available.